How to be a winner every time

With my formula you can be a winner ever single time! If your team wins, that does not necessarily make you a winner. The winner is not always the team with the most points. In my book, you are a winner if you play better than you did last time – its you against you, not you against someone else. Every time you do something, try to do it a bit better than you did last time. Here is my surefire formula for being a winner at sports:

Decide on your specific goal for the game. Not “I wanna win”, something related to your skill and performance. For example, in basketball perhaps your goal would be to have perfect passes that your team-mates could catch and the opposing team could not.

Decide how you will achieve that goal

During the game, each time before a play starts remind yourself of that goal

After the game, analyze what happened. Did you achieve the goal? Did you improve? What did you do well? What did you do wrong? How could you do it better next time?

You are a winner if you improve. You are a winner if you fail but know why and have a plan for doing better next time. If you make a little progress every time you play, eventually you will get to your ultimate goal!

Comparing yourself to others never leads to anything good. A perfect example is lifting buddies. If you try and keep up with your buddy who is genetically more gifted than you then eventually you will get seriously injured. You are a winner if you lift more weight or do more reps than last month – remember, its you against you, not you against your lifting buddy. If you get a little stronger ever month then eventually you will get to your final goal!

This works great for learning to Box/Kick-Box too (probably everything). It is o.k. to compare your growth to other people, but it is more important to monitor your growth compared to your last performance.

Nice follow up from “The 7 habits of highly effective people”, that you recommended. The book has helped me tons. Thanks Scooby.
PS I have now ordered “Strengths Finder 2.0” on the recommendation of a friend.

Yep. Another way to look at this (from a sport perspective) is that even if you lose against someone else, if you lose the right way there is nothing to be ashamed of. If you have a good attitude, try hard, and practice, you’re demonstrating good sportsmanship, which is something you should take pride in.